November 3, 2000

From Boo to Benign

It's that time of year, when front yards are transformed into graveyards, children stockpile sweets, and grown men and women don masks and costumes and take to the streets. Halloween is now the second-biggest retail season after Christmas. What explains its popularity?

LEIGH ERIC SCHMIDT, professor of religion at Princeton University and author of Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton University Press, 1995):

American holiday celebrations are